In the midst of writing last week's "click fraud" post, I was suddenly struck by something. Is Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) forcing a "reboot" of the advertising industry as we know it? Although this article postulates that Google's new universal search unveiling (really just a rework) was a causal event for the rather large 10%-15% click fraud estimates that came out of Fair Isaac, what is one to make of all this?
Google has stated before that it measures click fraud activity stringently and zaps almost all of it out of existence -- sometimes before the Google ad partner is even billed. While some Google partners are not 100% convinced of this, they continue to trust the web search leader since so many businesses live or die based on Google advertising revenue. You can be mad at the company's efforts to keep click fraud under control, but you can also be quite powerless.
The company can't just give all the specifics on how it fights click fraud, lest it enable click fraud hucksters even further. But, Google will continue to face public pressure over click fraud well into 2008 unless is devises some kind of strategy (a public one) to assure customers that it it keeping a lid on the problem. Google has some of the best engineering minds on the planet -- so if any company can get this under control, keep it that way and prove to its customers that it's not a concern, it will be Google. Time to put up or shut up.
Does Google need to "reboot" its click-fraud prevention efforts?
Posted May 23rd 2007 7:30PM by Brian White
Filed under: Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), Marketing and advertising
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-31-2007 @ 11:37AM
Boris Mordkovich said...
Brian,
The thing about Google anti-click fraud fighting strategy is that they are just not willing to disclose any information that would allow advertisers to deal with the issue.
It's not even their click fraud detection strategies that we need to know the most. But rather if they would be willing to simply offer a detailed breakdown of what exactly they bill the advertiser for - broken down by click, IP address, etc. (just like a phone bill) - it would give the advertiser and the 3rd party click fraud monitoring tools the ability to compare their own data with Google's. Once we can do that, detecting fraudulent clicks and wrong charges would become a whole lot easier.
Just my $0.02c
Boris Mordkovich
http://www.adwatcher.com